The Saudi prince travels to the EU for the first time since Khashoggi’s murder

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was due to visit Greece and France on Tuesday, state media reported, his first trip to Europe since the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Khashoggi’s assassination and dismemberment by Saudi agents at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 brought international condemnation for the powerful crown prince.

Prince Mohammed will meet with the leaders of France and Greece “to discuss bilateral relations and ways to improve them in various areas,” the official Saudi press agency reported, citing a statement from the royal court.

The trip comes less than two weeks after US President Joe Biden visited the Saudi city of Jeddah for a summit of Arab leaders and met in person with Prince Mohammed and greeted him with a fist bump.

The move sealed Biden’s retreat from a presidential campaign promise to turn the kingdom into a “pariah” over the Khashoggi affair and other human rights controversies.

US intelligence found that Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, had “approved” the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death, although Riyadh denies this and blames rogue agents.

Prince Mohammed’s visit to Europe represents a “highly symbolic step out of his post-Khashoggi isolation,” said Kristian Ulrichsen, a research associate at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

“While there has been no formal coordination of policy in the ‘West’ against Mohammed bin Salman since 2018, the fact is that he has not visited any European or North American country since Khashoggi’s assassination,” Ulrichsen said.

Prince Mohammed has also recently received a boost from Turkish President Erdogan, who visited Saudi Arabia in April and welcomed Prince Mohammed to Ankara in June.

Erdogan had infuriated the Saudis by vigorously pursuing the Khashoggi case, launching an investigation and leaking the lurid details of the murder to international media.

However, with relations on the mend, a court in Istanbul halted the trial in the absence of 26 Saudi suspects linked to Khashoggi’s death and transferred the case to Riyadh in April.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year triggered a surge in energy prices, Saudi Arabia has come under pressure from the United States and European powers to pump more oil.

Elevated oil prices were a key factor in pushing U.S. inflation to 40-year highs and putting pressure on the Biden administration ahead of midterm elections later this year.

But the world’s largest crude oil exporter has resisted pressure to open supply taps, citing its commitment to production plans set by the OPEC+ exporting bloc it co-leads with Russia.

In May, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the kingdom had done what it could for the oil market.

French President Emmanuel Macron received the new president of the energy-rich United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, in Paris last week.

During the trip, officials announced an agreement between French energy giant Total Energies and UAE state-owned oil company ADNOC “on energy supply cooperation.”